So About That Reading Challenge…

So I’ve found a bunch of lists that have Ideas For Blog Posts (for us people who can’t come up with enough things to talk about) and I was going back through my old posts to make sure I didn’t repeat any topics–or at least if I did, they were topics I hadn’t talked about in a while. It was there that I came across my post from earlier this year, talking about not making excuses about not having enough time, and how sure I was that I was going to reach my Goodreads goal of 75 books this year.

…

So I looked at my Goodreads challenge list, and as of today I’ve read thirty-five books, and am considered 14 books behind. …oops?

I MEAN I TOTALLY HAVE TIME TO CATCH UP BUT

It’s still disheartening, seeing the optimism of the beginning of the year catching up to me and laughing in my face. Now, that being said–a few months after I made that post, I lost my job. I’ve always thought that being suddenly unemployed would give me All The Reading Time In The World, but I always seem to forget that That Isn’t How Depression Works. (I’m having fun with these capital letters today, apparently.) Losing my job inevitably just leads to me staring at my computer, wishing I was being productive, and then surfing through YouTube for days on end. Oh so productive. I always mean to read more, I always mean to write more, and then I don’t. It’s something I’ve been working on for a while, and is likely something that I will be working on for a while. Then of course when the new job starts, there’s a chunk of time where I’m scrambling at trying to remember how exactly to Adult Properly, and I don’t get much done.

My family seems to circumvent this problem by reading a little before bed every day, but this would require me to be responsible enough to go to bed at a time when there is enough time for me to read before the time I have to be asleep, and I have proven very bad at this. Again, something to work on.

I find that (perhaps unsurprisingly) the times that I end up reading the most is when my family goes somewhere, and I’m in the car for extended periods of time. Since I’m rarely the one driving, I can sit in back and read to my heart’s content. But again, this isn’t all the time. So I end up with the same problem in my reading as I do my writing. There are times when I can get a LOT done in a small amount of time (here’s looking at you, NaNo) and then the rest of the time I’m floundering and wondering how I ever got anything done. (So I mean, if any of you have tips for how to get this stuff done…lol!)

It always amuses me (and I use that term pretty lightly) when all of the “writing life hacks” and whatnot are always “just wake up an hour early, and use that time for writing!” Yeah well okay, if it was just that easy, I’d wake up an hour early for a lot of other things too, like making coffee and relaxing, but no I can’t seem to manage to do it then either. So in the end, I’m still lost in the middle trying to find my way, but that seems to be the way of the writer anyway, and I don’t mind it too much.

At the moment, I’ve started reading Chernow’s book on Alexander Hamilton after being inspired by the musical, and I’m having fun with that. I’m not very far in, and non-fiction is about as far from my usual fare as it’s possible to get and still be in prose, but it’s good to step out of my comfort zone once in a while. (It’s what I keep saying I need to do, isn’t it? Hah!) After that…I’m not sure what I’m going to read next. As always, I have a billion books on my Kindle that I could read, and I also came back from a new acquaintance’s house with two paper grocery bags FILLED with classic sci-fi and other interesting sounding books. So who knows. Maybe I’ll go on a literary adventure and read something completely out of the blue. Maybe I’ll end up reading more M.C.A. Hogarth because that’s what I seemed fated to read at all times. Maybe I’ll fail to read yet again and I’ll completely miss my reading goal. (I’m not hoping for that one.)

What are you all reading at the moment? Since obviously the answer to all of my problems is simply to add Even More Books to my TBR, I’m always interested in hearing what’s on your shelves. Do you have a method for how you get through new books? Do you have my problem as well where you get new books faster than you can read them? How do you find reading time in the middle of a busy day? WHY AM I HOUNDING YOU WITH ALL THESE QUESTIONS AT THE END OF MY BLOG POST?!

Also, how are you spending this long weekend we are coming to the close of? My guess is that I’ll be sleeping for a lot of it, particularly since at the time of writing this (which is before the weekend comes) I am feeling like a royal trash fire.